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How to Recognize a Muslim When You See One

Western Secularism and the Politics of Conversion

Markha G. Valenta

Whatever else the project of the Enlightenment may have created, it as-

pired to create persons who would, after the fact, have wished to become

modern.

—Arjun Appadurai

And yet most individuals enter modernity rather as converts enter a new

religion—as a consequence of forces beyond their control.

—Talal Asad

I think we lack a name around which a radical politics can take shape.

—Simon Critchley

Was du ererbt von deinen Va ̈tern hast

Erwirb es, um es zu besitzen.

—Goethe

Prelude

One of the most dramatic aspects of the encounter between the West and
Islam today is the urgency with which both are being driven to reexamine
their most fundamental assumptions and worldviews—and to reinvent
them. Striving, forced, fearing to live together, we are creating a new world,
now, this very minute.
Yes, there is caricature, aversion, and fear; and yes, these sow the seeds
for what has been imagined by some to be an epic ‘‘clash.’’ So we speak of
the West and of Islam, we write down these words, black on white, ink to
paper. Yet this makes them no more real or true. Less so, if truth be told.
The West and Islam encompass histories too varied, too porous, too centrif-

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